tilence of demoralization, greatly promoted by the public ruin. All that Tacitus says of the delatores-this vermin and pest of human society, and whom he calls, Genus hominum publico exitio repertum, is but too true. The secret informations and summary actions upon them in the former republic of Venice were often awful. (1) All the imprecations in France against the "mouchards " were but too well founded. (2) The secret police under Napoleon in France, and all the countries he conquered, in all classes, from the highest to the lowest, and the counter-secret police to observe the first were some of the most melancholy traits in that grave period. To the shame of our advanced race we find that the Chinese penal code makes all anonymous information against a penal offence, punishable with death, whether the information be true or not, and any officer who takes upon, himself to proceed upon such anonymous information, shall receive one hundred blows, while no individual shall be punishable, upon anonymous information. I do not even find that high treason makes in this case an exception, though the code exempts cases of treason from almost every advantage granted to the accused. (3) In Spain the inquisition proceeded not only upon secret information, but the accused could not learn the accuser and informer-a right frequently, though unsuccessfully, asked for by the descendants of the Jews and Moors, who were willing to pay for it a high sum. Governments are frequently desirous either to get rid of individuals, against whom they have not sufficient evidence to justify any serious procedures; or to obtain more power by a show of danger. For this purpose they ensnare their victims in pretended conspiracies, or induce them to utter unlawful cries, and the like. This diabolical procedure, to which all despotisms resort if convenient, was technically termed trepaning, under Charles II. and James II. The public trials for treason at the time are full of evidence of this infamous means, and the diaries and correspondence of the times show us the use of the term. Any free people who omit promptly to impeach a minister guilty or strongly suspected of this crime, of trepaning, or even of establishing a system of mouchards, omits one of their most urgent public duties. The Greeks had probably no systematic secret police, except under the tyrannis. There we find perfect models of it. Hiero I. used to send listeners to the banquets of citizens. The Greeks have various names for these instruments of tyranny. (4) But the absolute democracy of Athens had, if not regularly organized secret police, its sycophants or informers, a shameless class of men, who were as ruinous to the passionate, wavering and arbitrary administration of justice in the times of democratic absolutism, as the demagogues were to its politics. The sycophants were considered by the ancients as a natural and unavoidable consequence of absolute democracy, and in this, as in so many other instances we see the great similarity which all absolute governments bear to each other, whether they are monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic, a fact on which we have dwelt already in the first volume. (5) The worst period of the first French revolution shows the same. It is a different question whether government have a moral right to allow a crime, of which they have knowledge, to mature to a certain degree. Undoubtedly it is a principle of justice as well as policy rather to prevent crime than to punish it when committed, as has been stated already; but it is not unfrequently of great importance for the public service to punish or otherwise extinguish a criminal act, for instance, a conspiracy, of which government may have evidence, sufficient for moral but not for legal conviction. Were government in these cases to proceed in the prosecution at too early a stage of the crime, it would only turn public opinion against itself, by its showing itself unable to sustain its charges, and thus, in many cases strengthen the offenders. Government has certainly not an absolute obligation to stay crime, of which there exists not yet legally convincing proof; yet it has no right to allow the crime to mature to such a point that citizens suffer thereby, if it have any convincing proof; still less, to favor the consummation of crime in any way whatsoever. (1) The brass lion, hollow and with open mouth, in front of the doge's palace, received the anonymous informations. (2) Within our own times a case has occurred which shows the effects of such a system in all its horror. The elder branch of the Bourbons, after their restoration, soon found that they were not the race of the people, -not national. Their government became uneasy. Conspiracies were suspected; a desire to punish soon grew up. Carron, an officer residing at Colmar, in Alsatia, was, in 1822, abused by a diabolical intrigue of the ultra-party, to commit himself, so that a show of an intended insurrection in Alsatia might be made. Köchlin, deputy from that part of France, intrepidly published in 1823, the whole, for which he was punished. A court martial sentenced Carron to death; letters to bring the sentence before the court of cassation in Paris, to which Carron had a right by law, were retained by the post office for some days, and an application to the keeper of the seals for staying the execution, until the court of cassation should have decided, was answered by Mr. Peyronnet, then keeper of the seals, that he would consider it after a few days, on October 4. In the mean time a telegraphic despatch had ordered the execution of Carron on the 2d October, when it actually took place. And now for the 'mouchards. Two of them, sergeants, were made officers; a captain was made chef d'escadron; the two former and another sergeant received each one hundred and fifty francs, and others still the cross of the legion of honor. - The French dictionary says, ad verbum Mouchard, with much naivetè: "Those who have the misfortune to employ these abject persons believe to disguise their contemptibleness by calling them observers." (3) Sir G. T. Staunton's Translation, p. 360. (4) Aristotle, Pol. v. ix, 3, speaks of them. They are called Ποταγωγίδες. Προςαγωγευς was another term for a mouchard. (5) See, for instance, Athen. 3, 74; Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 31. Simonides ut Plut. Timol. 37. XXXIV. Most codes of civilised nations make it a punishable act to omit informing either the proper police authority or the endangered person of an intended crime against the safety of society, or the life, health, honor, reputation or property of an individual, if it can be done without endangering one's self or any third person. The English law does not acknowledge this obligation except in cases of conspiracies against the community or state. The former codes on the continent of Europe made informing after the fact likewise a legal obligation; but all which did, or do so still, inflict but a very slight punishment for the omission, because the informer, if not bound by his office, has at all times been held "in universal and natural abhorrence, which the legislator has reasons to esteem." (1) The lightness of the penalty shows that even in countries where informing is obligatory, the penalty for the omission may be fairly considered as belonging to those which I have a right to consider as an equivalent for the offence, to which I may willingly expose myself, if I have reason to disobey the law. Informing, therefore, becomes every where an act wholly, or nearly wholly, one which we must strictly consider as falling within the sphere of political ethics. On the other hand, a frank and honorable intercourse among the members of society is so necessary for its whole well-being, and informing, without urgent reasons, has been always so much abhorred by honorable men; and on the other hand, the condign punishment of crime is so necessary for the physical and moral welfare of society, that it seems the following may be considered as fair rules for a conscientious ctizen. The establishment of a government in itself in a very great measure, relieves the private citizen from the obligation of informing; for all the sacrifices of time, property, and other things made to government, and the restrictions to which he submits, are, for the very purpose among others, that government shall protect him, and shall find out, prosecute and punish offences. It is its business. The more government circumscribe individual action, the less obliged is the citizen freely to assist. This has always been felt. The more restricted a government is, on the other hand, the more it becomes the affair of the people and the greater ought also to be, and generally will be, the people's readiness to assist government. Now I hold it to be a sound rule, that a citizen has a fair right to leave it wholly to government to look after all minor offences, for otherwise a citizen might lose his whole time. Police offences, except those of a generally dangerous character, for instance, against general health, belong to these. The citizen, however, ought freely to inform against grave offences, or crimes, unless the information would militate against |